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But the line of thought that I'd been chasing for several days was implicit in the ruins of the old Roman Empire, which gradually destroyed itself by substituting the faith in a legion of miraculous words for the strength of armies and the weight of walls.

— Lewis H. Lapham Waiting For The Barbarians (1997)

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More quotes by Lewis H. Lapham

It isn't money itself that causes the trouble, but the use of money as votive offering and pagan ornament.

Money And Class In America (1989)

The substitution of meaning accounts for the grasping of misers as well as the extravagance of spendthrifts. Karl Marx well understood this peculiar transformation of flesh into coin.

Money And Class In America (1989)

The world goes on as before, and it turns out that nobody else seems to to notice the unbearable lightness of being.

Money And Class In America (1989)

We are a people captivated by the power and romance of metaphor, forever seeking the invisible through the image of the visible.

Waiting For The Barbarians (1997)

Unlike every other other nation in the world, the United States defines itself as a hypothesis and constitutes itself as an argument.

Waiting For The Barbarians (1997)

All Lewis H. Lapham quotes →

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Lewis H. Lapham (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.